His jaw worked like a fish before he closed it and let the man finish. At the mention of Theo kissing him, he cocked his head and frowned — he'd quite honestly forgotten all about that, but clearly Theo hadn't. Every other thing he said echoed his own thoughts, and by the time his friend had finished, Fletcher had leaned forward and now peered at the man intently.
"Theo," he grunted. "Is that really what..."
He sighed, groaned, and rubbed his face. "Shit," he muttered into his hands before dropping them to his lap. Behind them, his face had fallen into that haggard look that aged him a decade beyond his years. "Is that what you thought this was about?" he asked. His eye flitted anxiously to the door, then back again. He tried to find some way to explain, but the thing he wanted most to say aloud kept getting stuck on his tongue. "I'm the one who should be sorry," he rasped. "I wanted to fix this. All I did was tighten the leash. And the Baron, I — "
He paused. Swallowed. His eye went wide as he fell back into memory for a moment before pulling himself together again. "Can you trust me when I say that it's not you? That it's nothing that you've done? That it's...him?"